The Elephant to Hollywood (25 page)

Stars from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood were much more remote than stars are nowadays where there is much more of a movie community, and actors are no longer stuck in ivory towers. Early Hollywood was rather like a closed order, often as a means of protecting handsome men and women who couldn’t necessarily act – and indeed might be gay, as was the case with actors like Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift. The contract system meant that the studios had complete control over their players’ public image, whereas the actors control that for themselves now. There were also no celebrity magazines picking over the bones of stars’ lives. The legendary Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons could certainly make or break careers, but they knew if they went too far, the studios would ensure they would never get to talk to one of their stars again. It wasn’t really until
Confidential
magazine came along in the early fifties that the era of deference ended, although the emergence of the paparazzi and their new cameras with long lenses finished it off completely. Tangling with the celebrity magazines and the paparazzi with their endless appetite for gossip can be a very dangerous thing – I’ve never wanted or needed to do it – but actors on the way up often think they can manipulate them, although they almost always end up regretting it. But then for many of the bottom-feeders it’s the only thing they can do; big stars always manage to keep themselves aloof.

11

An Englishman in LA

After
The Man Who Would Be
King
, I think any movie would have been a bit of a comedown, but it was 1976, the summer was glorious, we were enjoying living at the Mill House and I was filming
The Eagle Has Landed
only fifteen minutes further up the Thames. Life was good and the film could have been brilliant – the cast included Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence and Anthony Quayle, as well as Jenny Agutter – but despite the book, which I love, it was never more than mediocre. I think the problem was that the veteran Hollywood director, John Sturges – who had a great reputation – had by this stage in his career rather lost interest in the movie business. He openly admitted to me one day that he only took on a picture to fund his very expensive hobby of deep-sea fishing and as soon as filming was done and he’d been paid he scarpered. I can’t pretend I haven’t taken on the occasional movie for the money, but much of the real work for directors comes in the editing and post-production work, and although it was perfectly well handled, without his input it could never have reached its potential.

The Mill House was the centre of our social world in the mid-Seventies and we welcomed our friends there – Roger and Luisa Moore, Dennis Selinger, Bryan and Nanette Forbes among others – most weekends. Sunday lunches had become quite a tradition although not all of them were as memorable as the one to which we invited Peter Sellers and his girlfriend Liza Minnelli; Liza’s father, Vincent and his companion Kay Thompson, the Broadway star; and the singer Jack Jones, with his then fiancée Susan George. Liza and Peter were so in love and I took a wonderful Polaroid photograph (then a relatively new invention) of them, as well as a group photo, to mark the occasion. Sunday lunch was just the warm-up to Liza’s birthday party which was due to be held on the following Tuesday at Rex Harrison’s flat, but when I got there, I found Liza in floods of tears. She and Peter had broken up the previous day. ‘Look!’ she said, handing me the photograph I had taken of her and Peter two days before. ‘Turn it over.’ It said, ‘
Thanks for the memory, Peter
.’

I didn’t know what to say. I was a friend of Peter’s and I had had no inkling that this was about to happen. I was shocked, and sad for Liza. Unable to think of anything that would be of much comfort, I grabbed a plate of food and took an empty chair at a table beside an elderly woman I recognised vaguely. I smiled at her and then did a double take: it was Marlene Dietrich. ‘Michael Caine?’ she demanded sharply. ‘Yes,’ I said, rather taken aback by her tone. ‘You are a friend of Peter Sellers?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, rather more cautiously. ‘Well, you may tell him from me that he’s a bastard to treat Liza in this way! Why are you friends with a man like him?’ Her blue, blue eyes were fixed on me in a way that made me very uncomfortable. I muttered something to the effect that Peter had always been nice to me, but it didn’t wash. ‘Liza is my goddaughter,’ Marlene Dietrich said coldly. By now I was gobbling down my food so I could escape. As I rose to leave the table as politely as I could, she suddenly burst out, ‘And you should dress better when you go out! You look like a bum!’ An encounter I’ll never forget!

I loved being able to host our friends at the Mill House, so I was in for a bit of a shock when my accountant summoned me to a meeting to let me know that with taxes at the unprecedented levels they were back in the Seventies, we were living just too lavishly for our income. I was outraged – I had worked hard to make a life for my family and myself and I was not going to be bullied into cutting back now. There seemed only one option, and although I knew that there was much I would miss about my life in England, it was one I felt ready to take: we would move to Hollywood.

The movie producer Irwin Allen was just one of a number of friends encouraging us to leave England and move to Los Angeles – but he was the only one who also offered an inducement to do so. My mum was happy in her new home in Streatham and Dominique’s career as a show-jumper was going from strength to strength, so I felt happy about making the move from that point of view, but I had a real problem. Even taking into account selling the Mill House (which I eventually did to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin), I couldn’t afford the incredible house prices in Beverly Hills, and this is where Irwin stepped in with an offer of the lead role in a picture called
The Swarm
, to help pay for my move.

Irwin was the producer of
Towering Inferno
and
The Poseidon Adventure
, so I reasoned that he knew a thing or two about disaster movies, and I was intrigued at the idea of working on a film with spectacular special effects. What I hadn’t quite taken on board was that a burning skyscraper and a huge upside down ship are high-stakes visual drama, whereas a swarm of bees is – well, let’s just say it’s not in the same league. In fact, making our movie was in reality probably a great deal more dangerous than either of the other two, which merely involved plywood sets, some flames and a big water tank.
The Swarm
required us to spend much of the time filming inside big glass cages along with millions of real bees, none of which had been told they were only acting. They were all supposed to have been de-stung, but it was an inexact science and every so often there would be a yelp and the cry ‘Hot one!’ would go up and we’d all take cover. One of my co-stars on the movie was Henry Fonda and it was an enormous privilege to work alongside a screen legend like him, as well as Olivia de Havilland, another movie great. Hank actually kept bees and was always handing out small pots with the modest legend ‘Hank’s Honey’ written on the sides. Unfortunately, his expert knowledge didn’t extend to the lavatorial habits of bees, and he was as surprised as Fred MacMurray and I were (we were all playing scientists) when the bees were released from their boxes and took their revenge on us by immediately crapping all over our white coats. I should have taken it as an omen: when it was eventually released, the critics followed suit . . .

So with the money from
The Swarm
and the proceeds from the Mill House we finally made the big move in autumn 1979. We had a wonderful welcome from our friends when we arrived in LA. We spent the first week moving into our lovely new home and sorting out furniture and so on. The only thing missing – unusual for Beverly Hills – was a phone, but I managed to persuade the phone company to come out on a Saturday morning and install it for us and so we were all set. That evening the composer Leslie Bricusse and his wife Evie, close friends of ours from London way back, gave us a party and it was great to see everyone we knew there. Shakira – who loves Hollywood and thrives there – was on great form, but about halfway through the evening her leather belt suddenly snapped. She’s always been very slim and so there were lots of jokes about how much she might have eaten and whether there was a baby on the way, but we thought nothing of it and eventually went home, exhausted but happy at the beginning of our new life.

In the middle of the night I was woken by a fist crashing into my nose. Shakira had turned over and hit me in her sleep. ‘Hey!’ I protested, and rolled over, but just as I did so, she hit me again, this time on the ear. She’d never done this before, but I tucked her hand back under the cover and turned over once more. This time she hit me in the mouth. I sat up and put the light on – and froze in horror. Shakira’s face was a terrible grey colour, her eyes had rolled up into her head and she was on the verge of passing out. She had been trying to get me to wake up before she lost consciousness. With my heart beating wildly I grabbed the phone – thank God I had insisted on getting it put in – and dialled 911.

I desperately felt for a pulse – and couldn’t find one, although her eyes flickered for just a moment. My Shakira was cold, almost dead cold, and I held her in my arms, trying to warm her, while Joan, my secretary, gathered some things together to take to the hospital. At last the paramedics arrived and – in consultation with a doctor at the UCLA hospital – within minutes had rigged up the life-support system that would keep her alive while she was taken to the emergency room. She had a burst appendix, which is incredibly dangerous.

As soon as we got there, Shakira was wheeled into the operating theatre and – this being America – I was pointed in the direction of the cashier. ‘That will be five thousand dollars, please,’ he said. Five thousand dollars? It was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning – where was I supposed to find that sort of money? Not for the first time it made me grateful for the NHS. ‘No money – no operation,’ said the cashier. Just as I was about to become completely apoplectic with rage and worry, he suddenly asked, ‘Aren’t you an actor?’ I had reached boiling point. Did he want my autograph while my wife was dying? Luckily for him he went on, ‘If you’re a member of the Screen Actors Guild, you’ll be covered.’ I was; we were. I signed the form in a shaking hand and went back out to the waiting room. As I paced up and down, a man on a gurney beckoned me over. He had an oxygen mask over his face and was struggling to breathe. He seemed to be trying to say something. As I leant close, he took a couple of extra gulps, let the mask fall and gasped, ‘I loved you in
The
Man Who Would Be King
!’ and then collapsed. I grabbed the mask and shoved it back over his mouth; no fan of mine deserved to die!

At last the doctors came out of the operating theatre to tell me that Shakira was out of danger. Although I felt enormous relief, I couldn’t help thinking about all the ‘what ifs’. What if we hadn’t got the phone installed in time? What if the ambulance hadn’t been able to find the house? What if I hadn’t woken up? What if we’d still been in England where the ambulance men were on strike? What if I’d never joined the Screen Actors Guild and was uninsured? These questions rolled round and round in my mind over the next few days and weeks as, gradually, Shakira began to get better. And they roll round in my mind still, when I look at my wife and at Natasha. I know that I owe my family and the happiness they bring to me to the medical profession – and I’m very grateful.

Once Shakira was on the mend we began to be able to enjoy our new surroundings and to get to know the neighbours. As I’ve said before, Hollywood and Beverly Hills are not the way you might think and this is especially true of the people who live there. Films, TV series, gossip magazines always seem to make out that LA society is full of ruthless, bitchy, mean men and women – but we met nothing but kindness from friends old and new. This was partly due to the brilliance of Irving Lazar, who took us in hand and introduced us to all
his
friends – and Irving had an address book like no one else’s on the planet – but mostly it was because of Shakira. Now, Shakira is a beautiful woman, inside and out, but Hollywood, for all that it is not the nest of vipers it’s sometimes portrayed as, is a tough town, and she won everyone over. I believe that eventually you do become what you make of yourself. I was Maurice Micklewhite and I became Michael Caine. Shakira had been a beauty queen but she was originally a shy Muslim girl who had only become one so she could get out of Guyana and see the world (and she made a good job of that!): in Hollywood she became Shakira Caine. People – women as well as men – warmed to her, because unlike some women in Hollywood, she was uncompetitive. Other women like her because she isn’t after their husbands or boyfriends. She’s very cool, she never flirts and she never responds to anything like that. So while people may have liked me, or found me funny – everyone
loved
Shakira. In fact I once told her that if we ever divorced I’d sue her for loss of status . . . We were lucky, too, I think, because – and perhaps it was because we were British – we were invited everywhere. Hollywood society divides itself quite sharply into the executives and the stars, but we found ourselves able to mix freely with both groups and to be accepted by all.